Interview With Rocco "Rocmar87" Marotta

Game: HUSNG Hyper Turbo

Level: $300+

Charles Hawk: Please describe your environment growing up

Rocco 'Rocmar87' Marotta: I grew up in an environment where general gambling would take place. Nothing serious, but my dad would bet on the horse races on a Saturday or bet on a football match. There would also be some poker games happening 2 or 3 times per year at my house, where my father and my godfather and a few of their friends would come round to my house on a saturday night, smoke some cigars, drink some scotch and play a cash game.

CH: How did you start playing poker?

RM: I started when I was around 16 years old. I always thought it was a super cool image/thing to do. I had/have a lot of respect for my dad, so when I seen him play poker all those years ago, I associated it with money and success, and I wanted to learn it. So after I done a bit of research and spoke to a few friends, we started playing house games on Saturday nights. I remember we would literally invite everyone we knew. We would have so many people turn up to our houses for a $5 sng, that we would literally have 2 tables running, and sometimes 11 players on one table. These $5 sngs would start at 8pm and go on till around 5am

CH: Tell me the whole story from starting grinding low levels into reaching high atakes

RM: Around 5 years ago I had a business in Australia when I was around 21 years old. It was doing fairly well and was growing pretty rapidly. My girlfriend Daniella and I would run it, and were actually making decent money. We expanded this business so that we had regular customers and were becoming well known in our area. However I got a little over confident as we made more and more money. I made a very rushed investment, and signed a contract which I should have never signed. This eventually sent me broke.
I had to leave my girlfriend and go back to the UK as I couldn't afford to live in Australia (it‘s VERY expensive here). At this point one of my very good friends MOCA CHOCA89 (Ryan O‘Donell) had made over $250,000 from HUSNG poker. I had no money and basically nothing to lose. I didn't want to work a 9-5.. I wanted to be independent... Be my own boss...
So I asked MOCA CHOCA89 if he could help me to learn HUSNG, and he said that he would not coach me, but he would give me a website to learn from (husng.com). As you can imagine, when people heard about MOCA making that much money in my area, everyone was asking him for coaching but nobody was actually serious... So i guess at the time I was just one of those people to him.
I would literally spend ALL day 24/7 looking at husng.com... I had downloaded EVERY single video available. I would watch Mers (Mersenneary) videos while eating my breakfast... All the way through to lunch where I would stop for 20 mins to make some food... Then load up another video and study that.
Thinking back now i was completely obsessed with learning poker. I remember my friends would come round, and I had books of notes that I had hand written on Mers vids. It got to the point I believe where i could remember like 95% of the hands he played in all of his vids.
My friends would call me to go out partying, but I would counter invite them to my house to watch some poker videos, lol.
By the way, the whole time that I was studying these videos, I did not play a single hand of poker.

CH: How big was your first deposit? How did you build your bankroll?

RM: One Saturday night I went out partying, and when I got home (drunk) I deposited $120 on Full Tilt Poker. I woke up the next day and realised that I had played some poker the day before which kinda disappointed me because I had promised myself I would not play until I felt I was good enough.
But that Sunday, obviously, I wanted to play with the $100 i had online. So I asked my brother giabest what tournaments were running and he said there is a $100,000 guarantee and that I should play it... I registered and chopped it 3 ways for around $22kish
I told my parents that I would not be going to work. They value education, and always thought of me as the academic type that would end up being a doctor or a lawyer... they were not happy.

CH: At which level did your start playing husngs regularly? Any reg war stories?

RM: I started grinding $10 turbos and grinded my way up to the $60s. I then made the switch to hyper turbos and jumped straight in warring chadders0 at 60s.
Me and chadders0 are very good IRL friends and I have a lot of (heart) for him now... but back then when we started, I was convinced when I seen chad it would be beef :D
MOCA CHOCA89 seen that I was warring chadders0 and realised how far I had come, and how seriously I took it. At this point he started helping me ALOT. He would let me watch him play, and explain his thought process to me as I watched him... some of the things I do today are from what MOCA CHOCA89 taught me years ago!
Me and chadders0 eventually met IRL and i learnt a lot from him too in terms of attitude and reg warring. I was fascinated by his fearless approach. He was obviously always 1 or 2 stakes ahead of me, so when I was at 60s he was at 100s, when he was at 200s I was at 100s, etc. Now he's at 500s and I'm at 300s.
A secret aim of mine is to over take him :)

CH: What did you have to refuse to be able pursue your poker carreer? Was it worth it?

RM: My dad is a property developer. He owns a company and always had/will always have my back. He was very eager for me to go into business with him, but I wanted to play poker.
I also have lots of initiative and really consider myself a go getter, so if I was not doing poker now, I believe I would own some kind of business. I am not sure in what.
Because of poker however, I can live in Australia with my beautiful fiancé, have the freedom and luxury to travel anywhere. I am grateful and thankful that I can do this and I love it. I made a great decision pursuing poker and I hope I will continue to enjoy the benefits of my hard work for the foreseeable future.

CH: Do you remember fantasizing about being a high stakes shark? What expectations did you have? Which of them became reality and which of them did not?

RM: Well I'm only a $300 regular. I don't consider this high stakes. Maybe I have lost value for money a little, but I intend to keep growing and improving.
I do however remember being at $10s, and thinking to myself... 'WOW if I could only be a $60s reg I would be happy there forever...' Obviously most humans are designed to always want bigger and better things... so staying at $60s was not enough to satisfy me.
However if someone said to me when I first started that in only 3 years I would be a $300 regular, and a leader of the $300 division, I never would have believed that!

CH: Which husng.com videos are your favorites?

RM: Apart from all of the strategy videos, the life balance videos stood out most. I remember simple things from some Mers videos like: your desk is your office space, and your bed is your chill out space... don't mix the two. I really enjoy and agree with things like this.

CH: Describe your main leaks which you had when you started grinding turbos and hyper turbos, and how easy or hard it was to eliminate them from your game.

RM: One of my main leaks was wanting every session to be a winning one. I remember thinking of poker as a 'job' which should pay every single day... a losing day was really tough. I done a lot of work on improving, and to be honest MOCA CHOCA89 helped me the most when it came to tilting. He had a zero tolerance approach to tilting/complaining.
In fact when a few of us would grind together, the first one to tilt, had to send everyone else in the room a buy in. Tilting was considered a 'tut' or a 'huff' of frustration.
It‘s a blurry line to say when/how I got rid of tilt issues... all I know is that today I rarely to almost never tilt... when I do feel frustrated, I step back and look at the bigger picture. I understand totally that its a game of many variables and accepted a long time ago when I decided to play poker professionally that variance is going to be a part of my everyday life.
Besides, when you look at things logically, it's pretty hard to tilt. Emotions block off a part of your brain that enable you to think logically, so when I play poker, I try to detach myself from the game in order to have no emotions towards what is happening and be as logical as possible. Of couse I'm only human and if I do feel like I'm getting frustrated, I just quit.

CH: Do you have any methods on how to be mentally strong and stable for as long as possible?

RM: I‘m not sure if I made this up, or I read it somewhere... but I use it a lot - "The life pie chart"
Basically a regular person‘s with a 9-5 job "life pie chart" might look like: 30% work, 20% family, 20% sports, 20% relationship and 10% friends.
Now when I first started playing poker, my "life pie chart" looked something like this: 90% poker, 5% relationship, 5% family and friends. When poker goes bad, how do you think I was going to feel? That‘s like 90% of my life that just got flipped upside down!
So I worked a lot on making my balance very healthy. If poker goes bad now, I have so many positive things going for me, I enjoy the gym... friends... fiancé... family... media etc etc... When poker is the right proportion of your life... it can be managed and kept in check.
It‘s very easy for poker players to let poker take over their 'life pie chart'... That‘s when emotions get involved and things go pair shaped.

CH: Tell me about your biggest downswing ever.

RM: My biggest ever downswing was this year. I had an amazing start to the year. I believe by the end of march I would have been number #1 on the leader board total profit up to $300s and I was also playing $500s and $1000s when the lobs were free. I remember one night I lost an insane amount of buy ins at $1000s vs a fish. Shortly after that I had a shot at becoming a $500s reg. I really regret the approach I took and wish I was slightly more calculated. I remember playing 400-600 games per day for like 5 days straight. That really didn't go well, but I was really trying to hammer in the volume and be a problem for people.
I feel i ran pretty bad, and of course the skill gap from a $300 to a $500 player is WAY larger than I initially expected - the $500 players are really sick good.
The good thing is now that when I war a reg at $300s, it almost feels too soft compared to playing and reviewing my games vs the $500 regs. I‘m happy I had a rough experience... I learnt a lot, and I am a much stronger player both mentally and at the tables.
I don't want to talk about figures or share any graphs as my mum is probably gonna read this, and she thinks losing $10 is the end of the world :) I will say that I have done very very well vs some regs and pretty meh vs others. Overall though I feel that reg v reg play is definately one of my strong points and I think it‘s an invaluable strength. I can probably play higher volume for longer hours than most people at my level.

CH: How many games per day is standard for you?

RM: I like to try to average 3000-4000 games per month. I'm happy with 1k games per week. if I'm reg warring someone though, obv that number is higher.

CH: Do you have any strict rules about having days off?

RM: It‘s recommended that any professional poker player has one day off per week. By day off I mean not even looking at your computer screen. I should probably try to enforce this, but at the moment I probably play poker 7 days per week. Probably less on weekends because my fiancé is home and not at work.

CH: Are you familliar with the Gorcsev situation? He is shooting $500s and it's not going well for him so far... What practical advices could you give him?

RM: I think we have mutual respect for each other, but we very rarely speak on Skype. I‘m sure he knows what he is doing and is very aware of how strong/solid the $500s are. I hope that he is playing for the right reasons, and not chasing money or something like that.
I tried and failed at $500s, so I'm probably not the best guy to give advice.

CH: Do you know any players who made it to $500s this year, or moved down from $500s to $300s?

RM: Yes players have moved down from the $500s to the $300s, and two have moved up from the $300s to the $500s.

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FROM THE INTERVIEW WITH MOCA CHOCA89:

Charles Hawk: Do you use hud? Is it possible to win in a long run - in husngs hypers - without it?

MOCA CHOCA89: I never used a hud, I still don't, I review sometimes but I play in the moment and adapt in the moment. I am learning to use a hud now as I am giving away edges vs fish when I am playing multiple games vs different fish. I believe hud's can damage the memory and people become very co-dependand on them and I have beaten all the regs with out using one. I do have all my hands though so I know ev

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CH: Do you agree with him? Whats your approach about it?

RM: Personally I can't/won't play without my HUD. I don't agree with MOCA on this. I don't understand how it can damage peoples memory... By not having to remember something, doesn't mean that you get worse at remembering things imo.
MOCA now uses a hud if I'm not mistaken. He came to stay with me in Australia last month and we grinded together - he was using a hud.

CH: Do you use CoffeeHUD?

RM: Yes – I have tried to move away from it a few times, and create my own... but I always find myself reverting back to it.

CH: How many tables do you usually play at once? How many VPPs have you earned in 2013?

RM: I have sharky set to 6 tables, but usually find myself pausing shark when I get 4 tables up. Last year I earned close to 800,000 VPPs.

CH: How many games did you play this year?

RM: I have switched computers a few times so don't have all of my games on one database, so It‘s hard to tell you how many games I have played this year exactly... I have around 400,000 VPPs.

CH: Could you send me a photo of your grind station?

That's my grind zone in australia

That's my grind zone in the UK

CH: Do you listen music while grinding?

RM: I do listen to music while I'm grinding... I used to only listen to rap music, but recently I've widened the stuff I listen to. When I'm playing 2+ tables, the music stops and I can't have any noise. I can only listen to music if I am 1 tabling. And I can't have the TV on or anything like that.

CH: Do you have an excel file where you write up your results?

RM: I don't have an excel file, I use PT4 to track all of my results, and occasionally unblock Sharkscope to check where I am on the leaderboard.

CH: What is your ratio betwen grinding and analyzing/learning new stuff?

RM: I probably spend about 6:1 ratio grinding to study.

CH: With whom do you discuss strategy most?

RM: Right now my favourite people to speak to about strategy are Jack "jackstack99/aisixer3jk" Ketendjian and Zak “BOOMF” Wray... They are both beasts and I respect their opinions and thought processes a ton. I probably would not speak to many others about strategy as things discussed are kind of secret. Likewise, i expect what i say to remain with them too.

CH: What are your hobbies?

RM: My favourite hobbies are eating fine food... poker and gym. My favourite recent movie is Wolf Of Wall Street and I'm a big fan of Harry Potter books.

CH: What are your future plans?

RM: I plan to play WSOP Main Event. If not this year, then definitely the next. This year my aim is to purchase a property with my father. I‘m already discussing details, and intent on buying something in the next few months.

Please subscribe Rocco “Rocmar87“ Marotta in Twitter (@rocmar87) and in Instagram (@rocmar87).